concrete color experiment

after taking robert dancik's EXCELLENT "box pendant with concrete" class i have found myself madly sketching a million ideas for using concrete with metal clay and by itself for jewelry.

i REALLY like the texture and look of the concrete in it's natural white form but i thought i really wanted some gray or black. and i wanted it immediately.

the way that concrete is tinted is with pigment powder but i, unfortunately, didn't have any. what i did have was some non-waterproof drawing ink. i was hoping it was water-based, but it smelled just like alcohol when i opened it. 

i tried it anyway. i used the ink in place of all the water in one batch (the 2 back domes) and just tinted some damp concrete with a single drop in another batch (the one with the embedded jump ring).

guess what? it worked just fine in both cases. 

it took MUCH longer to set-up...i watched it for 30 minutes and i still was able to move it around and change it's shape before i finally went to bed. when i got up -ta da!

solid, and not any more likely to break than white pieces of the same size.

BUT.

the color came off all over my hands when i handled them. i will try to soak and/or wash them to see if it's possible to get rid of the unbonded ink pigment on the outside of the pieces.

what i think i like best about the experiments last night is the fingerprint pattern i made with my inky poking finger on the back of a white concrete disk i had!!!!!